Pemmican Eaters

• Publisher: Ecw Press Digital
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781770907225
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

With a title derived from John A. Macdonald's moniker for the Mtis, The Pemmican Eaters explores Marilyn Dumont's sense of history as the dynamic present. Combining free verse and metered poems, her latest collection aims to recreate a palpable sense of the Riel Resistance period and evoke the geographical, linguistic/cultural and political situation of Batoche during this time through the eyes of those who experienced the battles, as well as through the eyes of Gabriel and Madeleine Dumont and Louis Riel.

with second sight, she pushes

sitting close to light

falling through a window

glancing down a needle

along a thread

to the centre

of a bright bead

is her belief

in petal, stem, and leaf

she directs a long thin needle

picks one tiny seed

bead, after seed

bead, after seed

from a saucer

until she has drawn a long white string with

her fingers

at the end of a needle

her fingers, nudge their seeds side by side

looping their weight into a petal

laid flat against the fabric nap

each seed pressed

against the cloth by the thumb and forefinger of her left hand

while thumb and forefinger of her right

plumb the unseen side of the fabric with

another needle and thread, and

with second sight, she pushes

the needle and thread up precisely

where her eye wants to meet it

on the surface of the fabric

then down

between each bead

by seed bead

seed

over and over

repeated

this gesture petal

takes patient shape

o

the bead’s colour makes no sound

but it is cranberry, moss, and fireweed

it is also wolf willow, sap, and sawdust

as well as Chickadee, Magpie, and Jackrabbit

a bead is not simply dark blue

but Saskatoon blue

it’s not merely black,

but beaver head black

and it’s not just a seed bead

it’s a number 11 pearlized bead

or a number 10 two-cut glass bead

or a number 8 French white heart

o

the fabric weightles...

Table of contents

• The Pemmican Eaters
• Previous Works
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgements
• Our Gabriel
• Otipemisiwak
• Letter to Sir John A. Macdonald
• Notre Frères
• Li bufloo
• How to Make Pemmican
• I wanted to treat them as we would have treated buffalo
• Les Animaux
• these are wintering words
• What we don’t need
• October 1869: to smoke their pipes and sing their songs
• Lines
• Not a single blade
• Ode to the Red River Cart
• Fiddle bids us
• Just tell me when the fiddler arrives
• She worries beads
• with second sight, she pushes
• Sky berry and water berry
• Beads the right size and colour
• the land she came from
• The black mare
• you are riding for the border tonight
• Red River framed houses & dust
• To a fair country
• what’s left
• The Showman & Show Indians
• rich in horses
• Requiem for Louis Riel
• Post Battle of Batoche: Gatling Gun
• Our Prince
• Louis’ last vision
• End Notes
• About the Author
• Copyright